Johnny Cakes (The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) Read online

  I blinked to clear my mind with his last asinine statement. “Get who back?”

  With all sincerity, he said, “Katie Lee.”

  My palm made a pop when it hit the center of my forehead. “You have to be joking.”

  He shook his head. “Losing Katie Lee was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.”

  “I’m a little fuzzy here. How is sleeping with Sheila going to get Katie Lee back?”

  Nash stood up and placed the last of the packages on the dolly. “I’m not sleeping with Sheila and never have.”

  “You were in her bedroom. She was only wearing a t-shirt.” It took a few moments for those words to register. “She’s sure making it look that way.”

  “I’m sure she has her reasons.”

  “Reasons?” Sheila She-Devil is a hot-tempered, conniving troublemaker. That wasn’t news.

  “Maybe if Katie Lee were to suspect something and get a little jealous, that might help my cause.” Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out a toothpick and slipped into his mouth. He nodded toward the dolly. “Is this the last one?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and grabbed my coat.

  He handed me a receipt off a clipboard. “You headed home?”

  “Thankfully.”

  I followed Nash down the hall to the elevator. “Snow is predicted. Supposed to blow in tonight.”

  I pulled my hood up and sighed.

  “You get a new set of wheels yet?”

  “No.”

  “Did you really find a snake in your house?”

  “Hasn’t been found yet. When did you put it there?”

  “I don’t mess with snakes. Can I give you a lift home?”

  NOTE TO SELF

  Schleck using Nash’s courier service. Hey, I’m not liable for the package deliveries. It’s not like I recommended him.

  Nash pleads innocent to planting a snake in the house. He’s a seasoned liar. I don’t believe him, but why would he?

  FEBRUARY 1989

  CHAPTER 19

  Burr Under My Saddle

  I had mixed feelings about the month of February, and it had nothing to do with the irritable wind that I could hear howling as it swept between campus buildings. To be honest, it was the Valentine holiday that had me overanalyzing my relationship—or lack thereof—with Stone. We talked long-distance on and off, with no particular regularity, then hooked up when the season changed: Spring Break, Halloween, winter break, Valentine’s.

  “That’s not a relationship,” Francine had said. “That’s a chimney cleaning.”

  Confined in the professor’s office, inhaling her perfume and packaging supplies, my mind sought a distraction. As if pining after Stone wasn’t bad enough, even worse, I took a fair amount of pleasure drifting over bad boy Bubba, from beard-stubble cheeks to his naked toes, and everything in between. The inner me acted conflicted and had trouble determining whom I’d choose to be stuck with on a desert island. I knew the answer should be Stone, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I wouldn’t have minded if it were Bubba. I couldn’t stop obsessing over the only two men I’d ever slept with. It wasn’t lost on me that they had three things in common: both were good in bed, both knew how to handle a weapon, and both were on my top suspect list for killing Billy Ray.

  “Rachael, be careful with that Feyen. I don’t want to ship damaged goods.”

  I looked at the professor, annoyed by her perfectly-styled asymmetrical bleached bob. Holding an expressionless face, I worked hard to repress a violent impulse that prodded me to whap the shoddy art over her head. How she managed to find so many suckers to buy this crap as far North as New York and as West as Texas, was a mystery to me. She was better off than last year. Maybe she’d inherited. I didn’t know how much she was selling the garbage for, but surely, it couldn’t have been much. Her concern over this poster art seemed trite. She had it out for me. For some reason, which I hadn’t wrapped my head around, I got under her skin. Any normal person would avoid that situation, but Schleck was sadistic. Bossing me around somehow made her feel better about herself.

  The professor riffled through an inch-thick stack of typed papers. Last year she’d had me check dates and facts and give brief critiques. I’d been bitter about that, but now I’d jump at the chance for a task that required some amount of thought. The packaging tape I unraveled made a deafening chalkboard squeak. With each stop and start, she looked up from her stack all flustered and it gave me satisfaction to give the roll another tug.

  The ringer on her new dual-line phone belted dling-dling on high. Holding the handheld to her ear, she pressed a random button and said, “Professor Schleck. Hello? Hello?” The phone kept ringing. She pressed another, and repeated three more times until she found one that connected her to the caller. “Schleck here.”

  Her red lipstick, as bright as a British phone booth, pressed into the phone and stained the creamy plastic mouthpiece. She swiveled so the chair back faced me.

  Like that was going to keep her conversation private!

  “Hey there, yourself,” she purred.

  I could hear a bunch of garble being spoken on the other end. Her pen scratched notes on her calendar blotter. The expensive Montblanc sounded the same as a Papermate. “Oh Dear. Let me check.”

  She held her hand over the receiver. “Rachael, I need you to pull the invoices and find the January twenty-third shipping confirmations.”

  You didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what was going on. Someone didn’t get an art order.

  “How many? What dates?” she asked. “I’ll take care of it.”

  As I dug in the bottom of a file cabinet, I heard the incoming line click, but Schleck didn’t hang up. Stunned, she stared at the phone then glanced toward me. “Did you find them?”

  Sitting crossed-legged on the floor, I thumbed through a thick stack of rubber-banded shipping receipts. Good thing I didn’t bother to dress in anything more than jeans and sweaters when I came here. “Not Yet. Do you have names and addresses or do you just want the ones dated January twenty-third?”

  She turned her pen over, methodically tapping each end onto the desk. “Dates. I can find the specific invoices in question. Rachael, do you remember packing a Grosz, a Klee, and a Beckmann?”

  I’d packaged Monets, Picassos, even Rockwells. All really famous art that even the non-art-interested Joe on the street couldn’t help seeing on dinner plates or a t-shirt, somewhere. I shook my head.

  “Funny,” she mumbled as she spoke her inner thoughts. “I don’t remember them either, but the Baron swears. Rachael, have you been careful?”

  “Of course. All the packages have been checked against the master list. Everything that’s come through this office has been accounted for.” But as I spoke, a four-letter word that started with an N and ended in ASH made me wince. If Katie Lee’s ex played a part in this hiccup, he’d be happy to be wearing an orange jumpsuit and eating bologna sandwiches for dinner by the time Schleck was done with him. Skimming packages from this platinum blonde bad-ass was a level of risk only the extremely stupid would attempt.

  Handing the professor a small stack of invoices, I offered words of comfort. “I’m sure UPS can track them.”

  Her eyes didn’t meet mine, and I took it as a cue to slink back to my repackaging area near the door. I couldn’t help but check my Swatch. Thirty-five minutes to go. When I got home, I was definitely going to knock back something alcoholic to remove the pricks and emotional bruises left from the sharp, unforgiving Schleck edge. I began pondering my cocktail choices, and realized that I hadn’t been to the Holiday Inn, my freshman year watering hole, in ages. Since Katie Lee had left town for a friend of the family’s funeral, I thought maybe I could rally Francine or even Jet to join me.

  It took the professor a few beats to figure out how to get a dial tone on her new office phone. While she took her anger out on the buttons, I excused myself for a fake potty break. Listening to her beat on some unsuspecting soul at UPS was more than I wanted
to endure.

  Down the hallway, I got a drink at the water fountain, ran my hands under warm water in the bathroom, and checked my teeth in the mirror for any lunchtime salad leftovers. Maybe I’d been unfair to attack Nash’s character. He did act decent-ish lately. And we did have a normal-ish conversation over Christmas break. The knife he’d given me had come in handy opening all the packages before I re-taped them and slapped the shipping label on. Packages went missing all the time. Schleck would eventually get the insured money back and in the meantime, she, or most likely I, could just ship a replacement or refund the customer’s money. It wasn’t like the art was irreplaceable.

  Lingering in the ladies room for another five minutes crossed my mind, but it was a busy place, and if I’d stayed in there longer, I’d have looked like a perv. Back outside the professor’s office door, I had my hand on the handle and I overheard her on the phone. From her tone, I didn’t think it was UPS. “I’m,” she said and stopped. “If you’d let me explain,” she started. “Mistakes can happen.”

  I got the feeling she was being chewed out by her boss for an infraction of some sort and I didn’t feel right, going back in there. But if I was away too long, there was a chance she’d make me stay later for the time I’d gipped her.

  Wrenching the doorknob, I swung it open and coughed. She stiffened in her chair. Her face, the real part behind the blushed cheeks and shadowed eyes, looked chalky as though she were coming down ill. In my corner, I re-stacked the invoices I’d pulled out, leaving a placeholder for the pile on her desk.

  Dropping my chin, I watched her doodle on her desktop calendar. “What about next weekend?” There was a long pause. She stopped scrolling. “I see.”

  As far as I knew, Tuke hadn’t worn Schleck down into agreeing on weekend plans. My guess was that Baron von Dufus lingered on the other end of the phone.

  Schleck hung up as I re-packaged the last of the boxes. I still had ten minutes left, and hated the thought of being given some other grunt work before I busted out. Schleck spun her chair toward the wall and blew her nose.

  “Are you done with invoices? Should I re-file them?” I asked.

  With distant eyes, she handed me the stack I’d given her. “Packages Plus Delivery, do they seem reputable?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “The courier service we use, the one your roommate, Katie Lee recommended.”

  “What?”

  “Rachael, sometimes I wonder how you get dressed in the morning.” She blew her nose a second time and discarded the tissue in the wastebasket.

  “When did you have a conversation with Katie Lee about courier services?”

  Schleck’s head rested on her chair back and she fiddled with her oversized pearl earring studs. “She was here looking for you early last semester and we started chatting. It came up that a friend had started a courier business. Do you know him?”

  That was a loaded question, one with a higher probability of damaging my reputation than helping it. “Kind of. Through association. He and Katie Lee dated freshman year.”

  “Is he trustworthy?”

  “I’m not comfortable judging the character of someone I’ve only met a handful of times.” I lied.

  “We do tend to take our girlfriend’s sides.”

  Students could be heard filling the hallway outside of the office door. Classes ended on the hour, which meant quitting time.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked expecting a brief of course kind of answer.

  “Today is one of those I’d like to forget. Three packages are lost and...” She stopped. “the supplier is livid.” She clicked her pen. “He’s been acting different lately.”

  “Can’t you just refund the customer? Packages are guaranteed delivery. I’m sure you’ll get the money back.”

  Schleck shrugged. “Probably, but Hans?”

  “Hans?” I asked.

  She rubbed her hands into her hair before shaking her cut back into place. “Hans, The Baron, my boyfriend, he’s the supplier.” She paused to analyze the nuances of her desktop. “Rachael, I know you intern for me, but we’re friends, too.”

  Since when?

  “I have to share. I think there’s someone else.”

  To stop my jaw from dropping on the ‘friends’ bomb, I mustered a neutral reply, “Someone else?”

  “The Baron, he’s been distant. Valentine’s is a week away. He hasn’t mentioned it and he’s such a romantic.”

  What am I? A sounding board?

  “Maybe he’s just distracted.”

  Her face clouded. “With someone else.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  She spun her chair and stared out into another galaxy. The conversation had gone off the navigational charts and I needed a lifeboat so I tried to put her at ease. “He hasn’t accidently called you Sue or Betty?”

  “No, Rachael,” she said. And I thought I detected a hint of amusement in her voice.

  “And you haven’t found anyone else’s lipstick, earrings, or unmentionables at his place?”

  She turned around and faced me. “No.”

  “Then it’s probably just a guy being insensitive.”

  She relaxed a little. “Do you think so?”

  “If you’re really worried, you can always hire a private investigator or just pay him a surprise visit.”

  “What?”

  “Joking!” I looked to my Swatch. “Is there anything else before I go?”

  She took a look around the office. For a moment I thought she’d think of something.

  “See you next week. And Rachael, thank you.”

  NOTE TO SELF

  Missing packages. Technically, I don’t think they’re missing. My guess is that Nash knows exactly where they are.

  CHAPTER 20

  Out of Kilter

  My head swiveled left and right. “I can’t believe how much the Holiday Inn has changed. Where’s the tropical wallpaper? And the stuffed parrots?” I gazed at my feet and tapped the toe of my ballet flats on the wood floor. “And the beer-infused carpet squares.”

  Sheila tucked her car keys into her purse and walked toward a high booth on the wall adjacent to the bar. “You really don’t get out much.”

  “If you keep insulting me, I am going to univite you.”

  “Jeez, you’re sensitive.”

  “It’s the Schleck effect. That woman makes me snarly.”

  “Why do you tolerate her? If I were you, I’d tell her to kiss my ass.”

  “I tolerate a lot of people,” I grumbled out of ear shot. I’d hoped to have a drink or three with Francine, but she was on campus somewhere or at Roger’s. My second choice, Jet, was occupied finding a carburetor for the Firebird. She spent about every waking moment on that junker. I didn’t know how she found the time for classes. Her only other hobby was Clay. I knew this from Katie Lee’s brain dumps. I didn’t hold her non-filtering play-by-play of my ex and Jet’s soirée against her, I just mostly tried not to listen, which admittedly was impossible.

  A bartender with wide shoulders and a smattering of freckles, whom I didn’t recognize, came to our table. For a minute I worried that I’d get carded. If he kicked us out, I would just leave with my tail between my legs and call Hugh for a favor from the ABC store.

  “Hey, Trevor,” Sheila said. “Slow night?”

  He winked. “Home basketball game. It’ll get busy when the bleachers empty.”

  “Francine must be at the game,” I said.

  “What can I get you ladies?”

  “Heineken,” I said.

  “Screwdriver. Easy on the driver.”

  Trevor strode toward the bar with a bounce in his step, and I kicked Sheila under the table.

  “Ouch. Why’d you do that?”

  “This is girls’ night. I’m not looking to walk home alone.”

  “Rachael, you need a chill pill. You’re wound so tight, you can’t even enjoy a little flirting.”

/>   “You don’t flirt, you solicit.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Tell that to the judge.”

  With agility and quickness, Trevor brought our drinks over. “Can we start a tab?” I asked.

  When he smiled, his eyebrows arched. “This round is on the house.”

  Sheila’s hand landed on his shoulder before moving downward in a smooth, calculated stroke. Sadly, I’d known her for too long and had witnessed this maneuver many a time before, but men never seemed to tire of it.

  She summoned her seductive voice. “I’ll have to return that favor.”

  The bartender beamed and went back to his post where he had a twelve o’clock, uninhibited view of our table. After his Sheila encounter, I was sure he’d be unable to steady his hands to measure any mixed cocktails.

  “Just sleep with him in the supply room and get it over with, will ya?”

  She left a red lipstick mark on her highball glass. “Why would I do that? The chase is the best part, speaking of which, why aren’t you scurrying after Stone in your bedroom?”

  As I chugged my Heineken, I realized going anywhere with Sheila was a bad idea—landing in a bar, catastrophic. She had an alter ego, Sheila She-Devil. While it popped in for snarky visits at the house now and again, it couldn’t resist a full-on sit-down in a bar setting. My only hope of avoiding some sort of altercation that would involve her insulting someone, namely me, was to make it an early evening, and leave after one beer. “He’s on Spring Island and we don’t scurry.”

  The basement bar’s outside door opened and closed. Through the glass block windows that lined the far wall, we both watched a steady stream of blurry student legs clip down the stairs toward the entrance. Before long all the stools around the bar were taken. “You two take it slow, between the sheets, don’t you?”

  “Sheila, I’m not swapping sex tales.”

  “If I share mine with you, you might pick up a few pointers.”